Dealing In Arms
by Silverskink
Summary: A couple of corrupted-but-in-denial Weaver spirits botch a gnosis hijack and leave a Shining Mokole in a confounding derivation of her various forms- minus a few choice appendages. When they lose possession of their ill-gotten gains the stuck reptile finds herself forced in to a contest if she wants to win back her arms.
1. Chapter 1

"You said you'd done this before!"

"No, okay, I said I'd heard of somebody who'd done this before!" Warp hissed to his companion.

The two Designer spirits snaked through the penumbra. "It'll be fine, I've done stuff mostly like this before," he affirmed, mostly to himself. The twilight sky dropped away as they descended in to the quiet realm of the haven. A small structure sat near the heart. The spirits were spindly affairs with small beady eyes and numerous delicate segmented limbs for sorting, untangling and weaving. They hustled together guiltily. The pair wove themselves through the entrances and made their way to the resting chamber of their prey.

"She doesn't look like much," Weft commented.

"That's the point, you cottonbrain," Warp replied. "She's got loads of untapped power. We can take it with no consequence to the Pattern at all."

Weft gave a little sniff. This venture seemed too good to be true. The designer knew he had streaks of deviser defining his existence, but he was wary of being corrupted with dissolver taint. This bargain seemed to skirt the slope of dissolver activity, but he trusted his companion. The Fabric of reality would remain intact.

Below them, in the small bedroom, a dark skinned woman lay in a single bed under a mass of blankets. Kate slept peacefully without stirring, completely unaware of the two spirits.

Weft followed Warp through the spectrum of reality until they reach the Fabric. He was slightly stunned at the sheer vastness of the woman's Pattern. "She's got a lot of makeup," he remarked.

"That's why she's the ideal candidate," Warp replied. "There's not many like her around. Look carefully, she's got a lot of basic patterns making her up. With most things, if you thin the pattern and take the excess, they unravel or become too weak to exist. But every now and then there's one that can bear to shed some weight." Warp began weaving some of the woman's pattern out of her fabric and in to his.

Weft examined the weave. Warp was right, it was a highly complicated Pattern, not to mention massive. There was a lot to it, Weft noticed. Small lose pulls and gives. Almost like she was somehow convertible, he thought. "You're taking her strength!?" Weft asked his companion.

"That's why we're here!" Warp reminded him. "Look at the Fabric. She's got reams to spare. She doesn't even know she's got it, she's not going to notice it gone. Trust me." Warp fed some of the Strength Pattern in to Weft's weave.

"Ooh..." Weft gave a little shudder. Her Pattern was exquisite, and he could immediately feel her strength bolstering him.

The two spirits gorged, leaching as much as they dared. The Pattern drained and dissipated, revealing the underlying base pattern. "We should go," Warp declared.

"Wait," Weft insisted. He checked the Fabric to make sure that no permanent damage had been done. The woman still seemed to be a lot of what she had always been. The actual amount of fabric had barely declined at all. He was pleased to notice that all the lose threads seemed to have been locked up snugly. Maybe this had been a good thing after all. There were definitely some signs of tampering, though. Her Pattern was intact but it seemed somehow disorganized. "We should tidy this up a bit," he suggested.

Warp gave an impatient little shrug. "Fine. Uh..." He scanned around the environment and found the pattern of a structure. "Here." With a master's skill he hastily arranged the woman's Pattern neatly around the prop. "There. Let's go."

The two spirits stole away in to the Umbra.


	2. Chapter 2

Kate did sleep uninterrupted through the night, but once she began to stir, she knew something was strange almost immediately. As she awoke she realized she was not dreaming but awake and disoriented. For some reason what had felt like a dream had turned out to be reality- her eyes were in fact already open, and she was in her living room, not her bed. She tried to blink but nothing happened, so she sleepily raised her head and looked around instead. Two alarming facts became apparent very quickly- one, the air tasted strange, and two, she was surrounded by the coils of some kind of giant serpent. She sat up and rolled over all at once, and the body of the snake writhed suddenly. As she moved her necklace slipped down her neck and continued to slip down until it rested at the base of her coils. "What the hell is this...?" She muttered, tasting the air over and over. She twisted her neck, looking for her body and limbs, and finding only a monstrous ocean of snake wound around an industrial cable spool that had been somehow set up in the living room. Giant beige and chocolate speckled masses of coils that didn't fit on the spool lay heaped over the couch and around the rest of the furniture on the room. She paused in confusion, taking in the scene. Her dazed brain made several observations- _I seem to be a giant snake. That cable spool should be sitting out in the yard, not in this room. I am a giant snake. I am in my living room. Why am I a giant snake in my living room?_

Answers not forthcoming, she resolved to un-spool herself. With little effort she quickly discovered this was a lot easier said than done. The spool did not turn easily, and her new found flexibility did not lend itself to unwinding. Her necklace had slipped far down her body and was now resting at the point that her girth stopped it. It had become uncomfortably tight as she contorted her body to free herself and she had no way to loosen it.

Eventually free of the spool, she and it were still taking up a considerable amount of the living room. She wondered where to start looking for answers. Her bedroom?

Climbing the stairs was less of a hassle than hauling her forward coils out from under her heaps of most-recently-despooled coils. _This is ridiculous,_ she thought. Surely natural snakes did not have these problems. More or less untangled, she mounted the stairs and made her way to the second floor.

Her bedroom door was closed. She nosed it in hope that it would slip open. No luck.

She sighed. So much for that idea. She peered through the wooden slats of the bannister. Her lounge room was still full of a chaotic mess of snake, despite the fact that twenty feet of it was draped up the stairs. She u-turned and followed her body all the way back down. _I have to call Zach. He'll know what to do._

She wound her body to the telephone, and looked at it momentarily. _Damn_.

This was going to take some getting used to.


	3. Chapter 3

The two somewhat-heftier Designer spirits deftly picked their way through the dank refuse, freshly encouraged by the syphoned Mokole strength. They were not certain of the Rogue's whereabouts, but they knew his usual haunts. The minor realm was one of waste, with hazy atmosphere, dusty ground and scrapipherlings skittering in the shadows. Desolate mounds of refuse made up the shadowy landscape beneath the sickly brown sky. They had not been searching for long before Warp picked up the trail of the corrupted spirit. "It's strong, too," he said. "It must be somewh-"

With a rush and a terminal w_haohoumph_ Warp was cut short as the Rogue ambushed. Dropping from above, the Rogue landed mouth-first on the unsuspecting tracker and in an instant had swallowed him whole. Weft stared in bewildered horror.

The Rogue picked himself up off the ground like a grossly-animated sack of chaff. His form was squat and lumpy, giving him the appearance of some kind of toad on steroids. He was radiating dimly, absorbing the luckless Designer spirit's essence into himself. Weft could clearly see he was outmatched. The Rogue regarded him hungrily with bulging eyes half-closed in bliss. "You, Designer," it gurgled. "You came here to fight me? Ha ha ha!" Weft trembled. The Rogue leaned closer. "You brought power," it murmured approvingly. "Good power. Where did you get it?"

"Warp- Warp got it. The Fabric," Weft stammered.

"You will bring me more," The Rogue hissed.

_Max..?_

Kate was never entirely clear how her mental communication with her conscripted unwanted soul-brother worked. She had been through enough with him to have a strong working relationship with the wolf, but she had been scarred enough times to know she couldn't trust him. There were plenty of sacred or sensitive Mokole secrets she wished to keep from him for as long as she could. Mental communication was admittedly very convenient, but she couldn't help wondering if it was the same for both of them. For all she knew, what seemed like a telephone line to her could have been an open door in to the private thoughts and images in her mind. She tried to keep her mind guarded when she used it. Kate had an uncomfortable feeling that Max's reaction to her serpentine condition would be somewhat akin to her discovering Max had somehow become a vampire. There was no need to ask questions about that kind of thing- you just dealt with it and mourned the loss of a friend. Garou were less-fairly biased against anything wyrmlike.

_What?_

_I need help._

_What else is new? _he huffed, unfairly in Kate's opinion. _What do you want now?_

_Nothing much. Could you please call Zach and tell him to come to the Junkyard?_

_What is it?_

_Nothing. It's nothing. I just need Zach to come down here._

_Why don't you call him?_

_I..._ Kate fought to keep images of giant serpents out of her thoughts. _My phone is not accessible,_ she supplied.

_What happened?_

_Could you please hurry? This is urgent._

_Fine..._

"I don't have a solution, but I am definitely impressed with your problem," Zach remarked later.

"Very funny," Kate hissed. Zach was at a loss.

"You just woke up like this?" He asked.

"Yes," she replied. She paused. "I haven't been able to check my bedroom out, yet," she confessed. Zach allowed himself a little smile.

"I see. Let's start there, then."

As he climbed the stairs, Zach's imagination flicked between the variety of possibilities and nightmares he might find in Kates bedroom. The least of which was not an unaware, sleeping Kate who would leave a very large snake with some questions needing answering. He knocked gently on the door before opening it carefully and letting himself in. Kate followed.

The room was dark, and the bed was empty. Zach pulled back the sheets. An old t-shirt and a pair of shorts were lying under the covers like a chalk outline waiting for a body. He looked at the snake. "You got teleported right out of your pyjamas?"

Kate tried frowning in surprise, but failed, so she tried raising her eye brows and failed again. Failing a third time to shrug, she grunted: "Looks like."

"Can you tell if anyone else has been in this room?"

Kate flicked her tongue again. "Doesn't taste like it."

"Well, then, let's try the Umbra."

It took nearly a full twenty minutes for Kate to slip through the Gauntlet. It was never particularly difficult at the junk yard wallow, it just took her that long to crawl her entire length through.

Zach wondered if she was a true snake or some avatar of a Wyrm. His mnesis knew of some huge snakes, but none this long. It was almost as if someone had just taken her archid form and rolled it out as thin as they could. _Could be anything_, he thought. If it was some kind of imposter and not actually Kate, they were well prepared attaching Max to the deception so easily. He probably should have considered the possibility sooner, he realized. So many weird things happened to Kate he was becoming complacently accepting. _Oh well_.

Zach's investigations and thought processes were interrupted by a sudden squealing. Kate had become very animated, and seemed to have wrapped something up in her coils.

"What did you do!?" she snarled in to her midst.

"What are you doing, Kate?" Zach hurried over and peered in to see what she had caught. Reaching the captive was slightly hazardous- there were writhing coils everywhere he tried to place a foot, and the last thing he wanted to do was step on her and piss her off even more. He lurched through the tangles.

"It was trying to hide from us," Kate accused.

In her tightening embrace appeared to be Designer spirit, or some kind of distortion of one. Where normally they had spindly legs and nimble digits, this one had muscular limbs and appeared even to have a spiny, strengthened chitin exoskeleton. The spirit appeared frozen in panic.

"What is your business here?" Zach asked.

Immediately the spirit began gibbering, almost sobbing. "STOP," Kate commanded. She clamped her jaws over the head of her captive. It froze again. Kate inclined her head lightly towards Zach, a 'continue...' gesture.

"What's your name, Spirit?" the mystic tried.

"Weft," the miserable spirit answered.

"Why are you here, Weft?" Zach patiently continued.

"You have to help me!" Weft squeaked. A spirit in need? Hmmmm.

"Maybe we can help each other. How does that sound?" Zach proposed. Weft glanced at the insides of Kate's mouth and gave a little whimper. "Okay, Kate, maybe back off a bit," Zach suggested. Kate withdrew her threat but kept the spirit bound up. "Weft? What do you need?"

Weft began fidgeting again but settled down almost right away. "There's – there's a Rogue out in the Fabric with stolen power. Warp and I were going to Correct the Rogue but... but... the Rogue absorbed Warp and now the Rogue is after me!"

"What do you mean, 'Rogue'?"

Weft struggled for a moment. "A spirit. It-it was Warp's idea. I didn't know what would happen. He said we were helping it... but... we corrupted it..." Weft's voice gave out in a wretched whisper. Zach noticed that the thought of the Rogue appeared to terrify the Designer more than the fact that it was wrapped up in the coils of an extremely angry giant snake. A corrupted Spirit could be trouble but probably not insurmountable.

Weft had wasted no time examining the Fabric of his captor, and was baffled to discover the Pattern was the same that he'd helped thin last night. Clearly Warp had been wrong. "Are- are you looking for your power?" the spirit simpered, glancing between Zach and Kate.

"How did you know that?" Kate demanded. Weft squirmed again.

"The Rogue has it! He wants more! He sent me to get it. I can get it back to you, if you can subdue him..."

"Done!" Kate snapped.

"Kate..." Zach started.

"I will take you too him," Weft said.


	4. Chapter 4

"We have to be careful," Weft whispered. "The Rogue is dangerous..."

Kate rolled her eyes again. At the start of the journey in to the trash realm she had been on high alert of the Rogue, but Weft's constant whimpering was wearing on her. The Rogue hadn't ambushed them yet, and her initial fears were abating. She had quickly discovered upon arriving in the realm that it was all but impossible for her to sneak. Her first few lengths were fine, but after a while she could not account for herself. It was more than a little embarrassing, given how easy Zach always made stealthing look. The disgusting environment wasn't helping. She couldn't shake the feeling she was sloughing through murky water. It wasn't damp, but the air itself seemed grimy.

"You look like you're coming in to shed," Zach remarked.

"Ew. Can't say I'm surprised. Crawling through this place makes me want to get out of my skin." Kate gave a sigh.

"I'll help you shed out when we get back."

"Thanks. I hate that. Can we do it after breakfast, though? I'm starving."

"You didn't have breakfast? No, I guess you didn't. No wonder you're so grouchy."

Kate didn't reply, but continued smouldering slightly as they crept through the garbage.

"Weft." The voice was deep and raspy. The spirit stiffened immediately at the sound. "Well done."

Weft looked around in a panic. "He's here! He's here!"

The Rogue gave a slow, booming laugh. Kate and Zach spotted the spirit perched on an overhanging pile of debris. "Is this who you brought to defeat me, Weft? More snacks? They look delicious, mmmm..." the abomination leered hungrily at Kate.

"Bring it on, Rogue!" Kate shouted. She hauled a few coils forward and poised her body.

"Kate, wait," Zach interrupted. "Weft, how can Kate get her power back? Just by defeating the Rogue?" Weft nodded desperately. The Rogue laughed again.

"You! This is your power? You can't get it back unless Weft weaves it that way. Thank you for stealing it, Weft. I'm very grateful."

Kate hissed in fury. "Is that true?" Zach asked. "You did this? You can undo it?"

"You little-!" Kate started. Zach cut her off with a gesture as Weft replied.

"It was-it was- Warp... Warp did it..."

"But you can fix it?" Zach repeated. "Weft, tell me if you can fix it or not. Don't lie to me."

"I can fix it," the spirit whimpered.

"You want your power back, crawly? How about a game? I will wager your power. What will you wager?" The Rogue paused. "How about your coils? They look fine and strong."

Kate swayed uncertainly. "What game?"

"Ahem." All parties turned in curiosity to the sound of a new voice. A voice with such unsupposing politeness that it passive-agressively demanded attention as only a soft 'ahem' could. The speaker was a fox spirit. "Perhaps I may help," Renard offered.

"Who are you?" the Rogue grumped.

"I am Renaldovitch, spirit Guide, Teacher of the Mystic Ways, and honoured Dealer of the annual umbral Uncertainty Realm Poker Tournament," Renard replied. Kate watched guardedly. Zach felt the usual lurk of suspicion associated with Renard creep up his spine. "I would offer to you my services as an honest, professional, impartial officiant of any wagers that may be cast."

The Rogue rumbled greedily. "No cheating? That sounds very fine," he agreed.

"Poker?" Kate repeated. Renard raised his eyebrows, a friendly expression.

"I trust you know how to play, Kestrel?"

"I don't have limbs!"

"I assure you that will not be a problem," Renard replied. Kate glanced at Zach. He gave a small shrug, and an even subtler shake of his head.

"Sure," Kate agreed.

"Very well, then," Renard said. He gave a small flourish. Instantly the scene swept away in a bright fluid splash of blue.

Kate found herself in a large royal-blue tent draped over a chair at a small round table. Across from her sat the Rogue, looking likewise slightly disoriented. Between them sat the little fox spirit shuffling a deck of cards. "What is this?" the Rogue croaked suspiciously.

"Impartial territory," Renard stated matter-of-factually. "This is a totally unbiased micro-realm where we can be sure that neither party has any advantage over another. We use these all the time for spirit dealings. Perfectly standard. Shall we go over the rules?"

"Yes, please," Kate answered.

Renard shuffled the cards. "Have you both played Holdem style poker before?"

Weft was frozen in fear, much to Zach's unsurprise. He looked up, his eyes narrowing thoughtfully. "What are you doing here?"

"I have a plan."


	5. Chapter 5

"Now Kate, you are playing for your physical strength to be returned to you, is that correct?" Renard smoothly asked.

"Right."

"What will you be wagering?"

"Er..." Kate faltered. "I have gnosis," she offered.

"Pah!" the Rogue dismissed. "Not enough!"

Kate's ire rose. She felt in a lot of ways her gnosis was what had made her what she had been. The Rogue's curt comment felt like a harsh personal attack on the quality of one of her prized assets. Renard interceded. "Perhaps this will help," he suggested. In a moment he had revealed from beneath the small table a large machine with a funnel feeding in the top. The machine was a dark garden-variety green, with the word _chipper_ emblazoned in gold letters along the top of the funnel.

"Amazingly, that doesn't make me feel better," Kate remarked.

"This will allow the game to proceed with pure Mokole corporeal presence as the stakes. If you would be so kind as to allow me to demonstrate," Renard offered. He gestured at the end of Kate's tail. "May I?"

Kate felt her confidence eroding. "Go ahead..."

The fox spirit hefted the tail of the serpent in to the funnel along with a few heaped later coils. He then turned a large crank on the side of the machine. Kate's alarm grew as her excessive length fed smoothly in to the machine, while on the game table creamy white and brown poker chips magically appeared in front of her. The Rogue laughed with approval. "Very good!"

"Renard!" Kate exclaimed.

"Is that enough, already?" Renard asked mildly.

"Yes! Yes! Stop! Please."

"You're right," Renard agreed, glancing at the table. "Of course, you only need enough to get started..."

Weft regarded the canvas in dismayed awe. He'd never seen anything like it.

The initial games went well. Kate had a few small initial wins with which she reclaimed some of the Rogue's tokens. To her delight, he returned two of her limbs to her. She now had arms. They were nothing compared to her usual human arms in terms of usefulness, but she figured serpent to effectively super-long legless goanna was still an upgrade. Hands beat hands-free, no question.

As time went on, Kate's luck waned. She hadn't had to surrender her arms yet, but her length was gradually being fed in the chipper with a depressing regularity. It didn't hurt at all, but the longer she looked across the table at the grinning Rogue and his increasing pile of chips, the deeper her heart sank. Every now and again the Rogue would sample some of his winnings, and Kate would notice shades of her physique reflected in him. The Rogue laughed as he harvested his chips, Kate played as conservatively as she could, and sighed as Renard continued to crank the handle.

"I would like to join this table."

The stranger appeared as a dark-skinned man. He wore a very neat looking suit and dark opaque sunglasses. His voice sounded like a chorus of men speaking.

Kate started to protest but Renard spoke first. "Do you have sufficient table money?" he enquired. The stranger held up a serious-looking black briefcase. He placed it on the table, unfastened the clasps and revealed the contents to the players. Inside the suitcase were rows of polished black stones, like ebony backgammon chips. Their colour had a unfathomable inky depth to it, as if looking at them you were actually looking in to the belly of a black hole. Regardless, they shone with an impossible glow. The Rogue ogled the treasure. Kate frowned, glancing between the stranger and Renard.

"He can't, can he?"

Renard made a light clicking noise with his tongue. "As long as he obeys the laws of the Realm, he is eligible to participate. He has an entry fee, he may join us."

"Excellent. Do join us," the Rogue gleefully invited. The stranger gave a polite smile from behind his sunglasses.

"But this is a private game!" Kate begged.

"Kestrel, this is private business between yourself and your acquaintance. This game is subject to the laws of the Guild of Spirit Holdem Masters, to which I am bound. We must obey the laws, it is of course in your best interests that nothing here does otherwise. You may elect to reject this application only if you reasonably find the offered entry fee inadequate. I can tell you, it is an extremely rare commodity before us and would not qualify under this objection. Do you have any others?"

"No, no!" the Rogue insisted. "Very good!"

"I'm just passing through the neighbourhood, m'lady," the stranger gently told Kate. "Don't fret too much. I'm not planning on staying here long." The Rogue chortled.

Kate sighed. "Sit down," she told the stranger. The man took the seat opposite Renard, and the fox dealt the next hand.

Kate threw in a chip to ante up and glanced at her cards. She'd been dealt a pair of Queens, hearts and spades. She dropped the cards back down on to the table and glanced at her two opponents. The stranger was as readable as freshly-washed Chevy Silverado. The Rogue's greedy, giddy demeanour had not changed. He still seemed pleased. A pair of Queens, though. Kate allowed herself a shade of optimism. She pushed two more chips towards the pot. "I'm in." The stranger coolly added two jet black chips, and the Rogue followed suit.

Renard dealt the flop on to the table. The ten of spades, the Jack of diamonds, the Queen of diamonds. Kate reigned in her hope at the sight of the Queen. _Keep your optimism on the inside_, she told herself. _Keep your reptile on the outside._ That part was easy, at least. She pushed forward a stack of chips as her opening bet.

The stranger paused a moment, and then pushed in twice as many tokens. "I'll raise."

The Rogue cooed excitedly, and pushed forward a smallish raise. "I will raise also!"

Kate looked at the pile of chips in the middle of the table. The Rogue did not seem to have contributed much more. Her coils were far less abundant now. She fed her tail in to the chipper. "Could you give me a few cranks?"

Renard obligingly turned the handle a few times. Piles of creamy cinnamon chips appeared on the table. "Raise," she said, pushing forward a larger pile of tokens.

The stranger smiled at her. Kate didn't smile back. She slipped her tail out of the chipper.

"Call," the stranger said, adding his chips to the pile.

The Rogue stared at Kate hungrily. Kate stared back at him. It is often said that if looks could kill, irritants could often meet any kind of nasty fate at the gaze of an annoyed opponent. Even with looks being unable to kill, the Rogue was in danger of a burn or perhaps some kind of abrasion at least from the sheer hate spewing from Kate's eyes.

"Call," the Rogue rasped.

Renard glanced between the players. "Alright then. The Turn." The fox flipped over the Jack of spades. Full house.

"I'll raise," Kate said. "Could you give me a few more cranks?" Renard turned the handle, and more of Kate's coils disappeared in to the machine. There wasn't very much of her lying on the floor now at all. She put her dwindling equity out of her mind and pushed forward a healthy amount of chips.

The stranger had been watching the chipper with interest. "I'll call," he decided. All eyes turned to the Rogue. The spirit paused for several moments. He gave his cards another quick glance, then deliberated a fraction longer.

"Call," he rumbled.

"Final round," Renard announced. "The River." He dealt the last card, the seven of spades. "Kestrel?"

"I'll raise," Kate confirmed. Keep feeding the pot.

The stranger gave Kate a warm smile that chilled her up and down her spine. "I'm leaving shortly," he repeated. "So why not? I'm all in." He picked up his briefcase and placed it in the centre of the table, his chips evaporating.

_You bastard_, Kate thought.

The Rogue leaned forward and cracked the case open. The treasure inside glowed enticingly.

"Call, or do you fold?" Renard asked.

The Rogue licked his lips. "Call," he gurgled.

It wasn't fair, Kate reflected, that the Rogue's actions were dictated purely by greed yet he was winning. His luck was impossible. She wanted to believe that he was being foolishly rash, suckered by the stranger's mysterious treasure. The fact that her coils were disappearing in to the chipper like water down a drain were obvious testament to his skills in obtaining. Ruthlessly.

"Kestrel?" Renard prompted. Kate snapped her face towards the dealer.

"All in," she hissed.

"All in," Renard repeated. "Everyone in. Reveal your hand, Mac."

The stranger dropped his cards on to the table, the Ace and King of hearts. "Straight," he announced. Kate's eyes widened. The Rogue laughed and threw his own cards down. He was holding an eight and a nine, in spades.

"Straight flush!" he announced gleefully. "You lose!"

Kate froze.

"Straight flush," Renard repeated. "Jack high. What do you have, Mac?" He stared at the stranger's cards. "Straight. Right. Straight flush is the higher ranking hand..." Renard paused a moment longer, looking at the cards. "Kestrel? What do you have?" The stranger was laughing along with the Rogue. He seemed far less concerned of his loss than Renard did.

Kate dropped her cards. "Pair of Queens," she said emptily. Renard winced. The Rogue crowed.

"Ah, win some, lose some. Thank you for the game," the stranger chorused in his strange multi-voice. He stood, shook hands with the Rogue and Renard, and offered his hand to Kate. "My lady?"

Kate extended her short reach out to the stranger, who gave her a friendly handshake. "It was a greater pleasure than you realize, meeting you today and enjoying this game with you," he assured her. She attempted a glum smile, but failed and didn't bother trying again. "Until we meet again, m'lady, gentlemen-" the stranger nodded respectively and slipped out of the tent.

The Rogue was cackling wildly. He frantically scraped his winnings together.

"Kestrel..." Kate had never suspected Renard would look so genuinely sorry. She looked dolefully at him. "You get to keep one chip," he said quietly. "You were gambling all of your strength, not all that you are. You get to keep yourself, albeit the smallest amount. Your heartchip. The rest is forfeit to your opponent." He paused. Kate stared at him. He seemed lost for words. _That would be a first_, she reflected bitterly.

Across the table, the Rogue was stuffing the chips in to his maw.

Renard gave his head a little shake. "Kestrel...I'm...sorry."


	6. Chapter 6

"Okay. Let's get this over with." Kate sighed and began piling what was left of her body in to the chipper's feed funnel.

The Rogue gave an ecstatic groan. "Oh, yes," he leered, pulling the stranger's briefcase towards himself.

_I wonder what makes up me?_ Kate thought. _Will I keep my mnesis? Or my intelligence? Or is that part of what he's getting? Will I end up as a powerless Mokole consultant, or a pet grass snake in Warren's apartment? _There were probably worse fates. Max would know.

Renard had started cranking the handle. Kate descended in to the machine. The bowl of the feed surged dizzyingly upwards as Kate sank in to thinning coils. No sooner had the coils disappeared entirely than Kate found herself flopped on to the table top, a tiny snake the size of a pen. She looked grimly at the piles of chips that towered like trees above her head.

"Game over," Renard announced. "My work here is done, I regret to say. This realm is retired." With a closing flourish, the tent was swept away, revealing the trash-strewn realm they'd started from.

The Rogue had finished shovelling the stranger's treasure in to his mouth. He wiped his maw with a stubby wrist and paused a moment, savouring the experience. "Mmm," he murmured, a little uncertainly. He gave a little wobble.

Kate thought something had exploded. There was a loud noise, a lot of smoke, and a great disturbance. When the dust settled, the Rogue was gone.

Kate stared dumbly. She had fallen a few feet, she was aware that the chips were scattered about and that Rogue had been silenced. Instead there seemed to be some huge presence. From her immediate diminutive perspective Kate could not make out more than a giant wheel and a vast, vast shadow.

"Cursed essence," Renard remarked. He gave a little laugh. "Fancy that. Oh well. Kate, your friends are here, behind you. Good day." The fox spirit vanished.

"My friends?" Kate the snake lifted her face and tasted the air. The stranger from the poker game was sitting patiently on a makeshift stool, an alligator settled by his feet. "Zach! What is going on?"

"What an absolutely magnificent truck," the stranger declared. Kate watched him warily as he approached.

"Zach!" She called. She tried to dodge the stranger, but he scooped her up. She writhed in his grasp.

"Hush, Kate," he told her. "Don't bother Zach. He's had better moods. Trust me." He gave her a stunning smile.

"What!? Why would I trust you!? What did you do!?" She craned her neck to look at him. "How do you know my name!?"

"Relax, relax. I'm here to help. I came here to help you. I just couldn't do it without borrowing a little bit of him. Don't worry, he consented. Didn't you, Zach?" The stranger called, a solo harmony. Zach gave a deep, rumbling alligator purr in response. Kate wondered how to interpret the sound. The stranger continued talking. "There is a corruption in the constitution of this fine truck. Let's see if we can extract it for responsible disposal. Weft? Take us down."

"Truck?" Kate looked around. From her elevated position she had a better view of the semi truck with attached trailer that sat parked haphazardly amongst the debris. Where did that come from?

Weft started waving limbs in the air with random-seeming yet precise movements, like a karate instructor battling a swarm of fruit flies. After a few moments a glow appeared before him. As it grew, Kate realized it was not a manifestation but an undoing. Weft was creating a portal. It gradually frayed large enough that Weft had to take steps to reach all the edges. He frantically processed around the border, gave it an experimental tug, and turned around. "Come on!" he urged. The stranger stepped through the curtain, still holding Kate. Weft hurried through after them.

"You're not supposed to be here," the spirit muttered woefully. "I'm not supposed to bring you here."

"Well we're here now." The Stranger was considerably less patient with Weft than he was with she, Kate noticed. "Get to work."

Kate had no idea where they were, but it was an amazing sight. The entire environment seemed to be a gigantic matrix of some kind. Systems, she thought. She was surrounded by some kind of network. Of what she had no idea. It was difficult to clearly perceive or define. Cables, beams, threads and hairs meshed together in varying forms and canvases in the foreground and background. Some seemed to be rooted clearly in a tangible existence. Others somehow seemed to be shadows, or illusionary, or even theoretical. Some blazed, some shivered and shifted, some sat still. Some glowed and other pulsed. Some seemed familiar, and it wasn't until she asked herself what she was looking at that she realized she hadn't a clue.

Weft was clearly in his element. Under the stranger's stern eye, he was deftly plucking a thin, knobbly black bundle of threads from one of the most majestic patternworks in the vista. He took the extracted material and knotted it tightly together in an isolated package.

"What now?" he squeaked.

"Now you restore Kate and the rest of us" the Stranger replied. Weft went straight to work.

"What is this?" Kate asked.

"This is the Patternweb," the stranger replied. "This is where all the plans, designs and instructions for all that is, are."

Kate gave a shudder. "What is he doing?"

"Quite a few plans have been modified in the past little while, and none of them should have been. He's fixing everything that he corrupted."

"He's the one that turned me in to a snake and stole all my pieces!?" Kate struggled in fury.

"No. Warp did that. Weft is actually good at his job, even if he does snivel a lot. Everything will be all right," the Stranger assured her. "No you don't!" his tone changed abruptly as he commanded Weft.

"B-b-but... Warp..." the spirit blubbered.

"Warp has paid for what he caused. He cannot be brought back, he has been assimilated. Leave him where he is."

Kate heard Weft sigh gently as he continued working. There was something different about Weft here. He seemed somehow more corporeal than he had when she'd encountered him in the upper realm. She looked carefully at the stranger, trying to determine his own true form. He seemed thinner, as if he were a washed out photograph or a watered-down painting. Either the patterns were running through him, or he was partial to transparency. It was hard to tell, both seemed possible. The more Kate tried to figure out the less sense the world made. Finally she asked, "_What_ is going on?"

The stranger smiled. "What you're seeing is the pattern for reality. It's been disrupted and Weft has to fix it. I just wanted to come down here and make sure Weft was properly supervised."

"Me too? I'm being fixed? I don't feel fixed."

"You're not really here, actually. What you are here is a kind of echo of yourself. The real you is back at your native reality getting re-written with the rest of us." The spectral alligator at the Stranger's feet growled at his words.

"I thought you were some kind of superior-designer-spirit?" Kate ventured. The Stranger laughed.

"Almost done," Weft announced.

"I'm a special blend on a mission to save you, actually," The Stranger replied. "At the moment I'm borrowing a large amount of Zach's human appearance to allow me to sit in at a poker game, that should have been restored soon if not already. That's his voice you can hear with mine. I also needed a dash of Weft's spiritual nature to allow me to sit in. The rest of me was actually extracted by Weft and bundled in to that suitcase."

"You're-" Kate's brain did a back flip. You're a _truck? "Theodorus!?"_

Theodorus smiled and gave a little bow. "At your service, Kate."

"Finished!" Weft bleated. He spun around, drew sharply on a zip cord and ejected the party from the plane.


	7. Chapter 7

With a sudden, but strangely silent rush reality changed again and Kate found herself standing in her human form facing Zach in his. They both stared uncertainly at eachother for a few moments. Kate held her hands up and ran her fingers through her hair. Zach stretched and shook his arms. "Let's never do that again," Kate suggested. Zach laughed.

They were standing in the rubbish realm Weft had brought them to. Kate turned around to see Theodorus waiting. "What the hell was that!?" she exclaimed, looking between the truck and the Mokole.

"It was his idea," Zach answered.

As the party left, not one of them noticed a small tin the size of a tuna can amongst the junk. The label was corroded and corrupted, and the tin itself was dented. A tiny, stripped-down epiphaling with just enough curse left wrapped around it to keep it out of trouble.


	8. Chapter 8

"We've got a hatchback, a station wagon, a minivan, a lawnmower and a powerboat," Kate listed. "We should go and visit Karnaj Garage."

"I don't know how I feel about the lawnmower," Theodorus replied.

_Fair enough,_ Kate thought. "You ready for this?"

Down the track ahead of the truck was a long ramp. Kate moved the stick in to first gear. "We _should_ see if we can scrounge some kind of small plane," she said thoughtfully. The truck roared as she accelerated towards the ramp.

"Neither of us know how to fly, Kate," the truck pointed out. "No aircraft."

"I know how to fly." They hit the ramp with a jolt and raced forcefully up the incline.

"You can put an aeroplane in front of me but all you will get is a flat aeroplane." With another bump, the truck was airborne for a few brief moments before plunging downwards with an alarmingly sinuous-sounding crunch. Kate took her foot off the gas and glanced about. They were rocking very slightly but didn't seem to be tipping.

"Theodorus? Are you okay?"

"Yes." His voice was a little tight-sounding.

"I'll just leave you to it, then?"

No reply. Kate tentatively opened her door, paused, then dropped herself out of the cab. Theodorus was resting like a wreck on top of a older-model fire engine. He was slowly sinking in to the vehicle, as if it were dissolving underneath him. From between the union of semi truck and retired pumper emanated an unsettling sound, like a large company of ravenous can openers feasting.

Kate took a few steps back and gave a little grimace. She couldn't help feeling she was watching some kind of bizarre spoof of the discovery channel. The occupational perils of supernatural automotive repair. She shifted to archid briefly to close the cab door and gave the cab a pat.

"I'll see you later, then." She slipped back down to homid, gave the pair one more glance, and headed back to her residence.

It took Theodorus almost an hour to finish eating the fire engine.

When Kate checked on him he was standing nonchalantly at the base of the ramp. There was nothing left of the fire engine other than a few metallic shells and shavings in the back of Theodorus's trailer. Kate swept them out.

She stood in font of the truck. "Are you going to show me your new look?"

Theodorus didn't move. From somewhere within the truck came sounds of finely-tuned mechanical workings. All at once the body of the truck began to shift form. The grille and headlights floated up in to the shortening bonnet until the truck was flat-faced with windscreen forward. Multiple wheels rose up underneath, out of sight. The panels of the trailer segmented and sank inwards, forming hatches and compartments. Multiple tools and displays appeared. The sleeper elongated slightly with extra windows blossoming while lights and ladders bloomed along the top. A wave of red washed down Theodorus's new form.

"Nice," Kate said approvingly. "Lights?"

The lights on top of the fire engine flashed.

"Siren?"

Theodorus obliged with a wailing alarm. Kate laughed. "Okay, enough of that!" She inspected the side of the truck. All tanks fully loaded. Ready to go. "If I'd know blending you with a Designer Spirit would allow you to re-design your own form, I would have caught one for you long ago! This is great!"

"Hmmm." Theodorus reverted back to his common design. Kate was never sure, but she thought she heard a smile in his voice. She climbed in to the cab and drove him back to his usual parking spot near her residence. As she left him, he spoke again. "Kate?"

She paused and turned around. "Yes?"

"If you expect me to assimilate any kind of aircraft... get your pilot's license. Then I'll think about it."


End file.
